Catherine V. Herridge is an Emmy Award‐winning veteran investigative correspondent who covers national security and intelligence.
A strong advocate for the First Amendment and press freedom, in February 2024, Herridge was held in civil contempt by a US federal court for refusing to disclose her confidential sources for a series of national security stories in 2017.
As a senior investigative correspondent for CBS News from 2019-2024, Herridge’s reporting was a catalyst for legislative change affecting more than a million American veterans and civilians. The Investigative Unit’s Emmy‐nominated series “Decades of Exposure” is credited by activists and lawmakers with the passing of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act in August 2022. Part of the burn pit legislation known as the PACT ACT, the law is considered one of the largest expansions of VA healthcare and benefits for American veterans.
In 2021, Herridge and the CBS News Investigative Unit won the Society of Environmental Journalists’ top prize, the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, for a year-long probe that exposed serious health hazards at the K-2 military base in Uzbekistan that supported Special Operations missions into Afghanistan after 9/11. In response to Herridge’s reporting, an Executive Order recognized K2 veterans and mandated a comprehensive Defense Department study on the health consequences.
Herridge’s recent reporting on retired Col. Paris Davis, one of the first Black officers in the elite Green Berets, kept his story in front of government decision makers and helped right a 58 year old wrong. In March 2023, the Vietnam hero was awarded the Medal of Honor at the White House for his heroism at the 1965 Battle of Bong Son after his nomination paperwork was lost twice at the height of the civil rights movement.
Herridge has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Qatar, Israel, Northern Ireland, Russia and the former Yugoslavia. Prior to joining CBS News, Herridge was the chief intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC), and a TV and radio correspondent for ABC News in London. In 2019, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society awarded Herridge with its annual Tex McCrary Award for excellence in journalism.
She is a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia School of Journalism where she founded a national security reporting scholarship. Herridge comes from a military family and lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, a West Point graduate, and their two boys.
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